by Brent, Cora
“Nah, you were just seventeen,” I said, remembering the tattoo which stretched across his shoulder blades.
“Same thing,” he laughed.
We left the eerie silence of the town square and began to meander through the side streets towards Polaris Lane.
Marco draped his arm across my shoulders. “So how many more days you mean to stick around?”
“I’ll probably head out early Wednesday afternoon.”
“Back to Boston?”
“Back to Boston.”
Marco was quiet for a moment. “And your plans for tomorrow?”
“Why? Are you asking me out, Marco Bendetti?”
“I’m asking if you want to spend the day with me, Angela Durant.”
My face was instantly hot with pleasure but I tried to keep my voice light. “And what would we do?”
“Whatever you want.”
“Is your bike running?”
I could hear the smile in his voice. “It is.”
“Take me for a ride then.”
“All right. I’ll ride you.”
“Debaucher.”
“Absolutely.”
When we reached my house Marco walked me right up to the door like a gentleman. I saw a light remained on in the living room, meaning he had been right. One or both of my parents were actually waiting up for their nearly twenty five year old daughter.
Marco cupped my chin and kissed me gently. “Good night, Angela.”
“Good night, Marco. Thank you for a pleasant evening.”
Even in the dark I saw something soften in his eyes. But when I blinked it was gone and he wore his patent cocky stare as he backed away. “Eleven am tomorrow,” he said. “Be ready for a ride.”
“I’m ready now,” I said mildly.
Marco laughed to himself and turned towards his own dark house as I opened the door to number 16 Polaris Lane and went inside.
My mother pretended to read Good Housekeeping magazine on the sofa. She looked up when I entered, as if she was completely surprised to see me.
I crossed my arms. “Daddy not keeping you company?”
She waved a hand. “He went to bed an hour ago.” She seemed troubled as she played with a strand of her short hair. “It’s been quite a few years since I had any reason to wait up.”
“But that was always for Tony. I hardly left the house.”
Her face clouded, as it always did, at the mention of Tony’s name.
“I called him today.”
“Oh? How’s he doing?”
“Says he’s still working. Of course he also sounded drunk as all heck so who knows. And then some profane woman started shrieking at him to hang up the phone.”
“Does he have a girlfriend?”
She shrugged, her eyes bleak. “It’s Tony. Who knows?”
My mother heaved a sigh and got up heavily, tossing Good Housekeeping onto the end table. She offered me a weak smile and a peck on the cheek. “Good night, Angela. It’s lovely having you home.”
As she began to shuffle towards the stairs I called her back. “Mom?”
She paused and looked back.
“I miss him too.”
I dressed hurriedly in my same old t-shirt and crawled into bed. Though it wasn’t terribly late I was exhausted. I blinked at the pale ceiling, remembering what it had been like, growing up as the kid sister of Tony Durant.
Tony was born impatient, explosive even. There was a telling photo which remained in fading 8x10 framed glory in the stairwell. Tony was two years old and at a mere four months it was my first Christmas. My mother had driven us into Springfield to get our holiday portraits taken.
The photographer sat Tony in a small wooden rocking chair next to a gaudy miniature Christmas tree. Then, tenderly, my mother placed me in Tony’s small lap as the photographer began making absurd buzzing sounds, trying to prompt us to smile.
My chubby little face broke into an easy grin but Tony fixed a stony glare on the camera lens and was immortalized. If you paused in front of the picture and looked deep into that toddler’s eyes, the restless anger was nearly palpable. Which must have been why, mere seconds later, Tony roughly rolled me off his lap and onto the floor where I fell with a crack, dislocating my tiny shoulder.
“Tony!” My mother scolded as she tried to comfort me in my wailing agony. “Look at how you’ve hurt your sister! Why did you do that?”
Tony only glared at her and shrugged. “Because I did.”
My mother told me that story nearly twenty years later and tried to laugh her way through it. A disastrous holiday memory. What family doesn’t have them? What family can’t chuckle over them after several decades have passed?
But the laughter didn’t reach her eyes and I saw in the shadows on her face that the memory of it still troubled her.
I didn’t miss Tony. By now I realized that the camaraderie of adult siblings would never be ours.
But although I’ve never had that, the fabled affectionate bond, it is something I do miss.
A brother who remembers the world of our shared childhood and appreciates that though we may not have been close then, we were bound in a unique way which was more than genetic soup.
I hadn’t seen my brother in three and a half years. Christmas Eve, 1985, he rolled into CPV in a dilapidated pickup truck and in the space of an hour managed to find and consume an entire bottle of wine, pick a screaming match with my father, and then peel out of Polaris Lane as neighbors paused from their own holidays long enough to gawk out their windows.
My mother drew up the courage to call him once or twice a month. I sent him cards for birthdays and holidays, though he never acknowledged any of them. My friend Lanie had a twin brother who called her every Sunday and who she spoke of with the mix of irritation and affection which was the usual sibling due.
When people ask me about Tony, I always feel at somewhat of a loss.
Yes, I have a brother.
No, we aren’t close.
There never seems to be anything else left to say.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The room seemed to close in on me as I tried to seek sleep. How many summer nights had I spent musing in this very spot in the dark? So many. I remember being age five and nervously anticipating the first day of kindergarten. And then, ten years later, sitting on my bed in the dark and listening to my brother and his friends as they talked about things I wasn’t meant to hear. My face still burned over that memory…
***
It was well past midnight and the boys were still bullshitting in the side yard. My window was open in search of the rare summer breeze and every few moments I could hear the crack of another beer can opening. I didn’t dare let on that I could hear them full well. Their talk was fascinating. All sex and tough guy expressions, it stirred a strange longing in me as I lay silently in my bed a week after my fifteenth birthday.
Except for the brief and confusing passages I’d found in forbidden books, it was all baffling. I’d never been kissed, never been touched, and although my body was fully, almost embarrassingly, developed, I wondered if I ever would be.
Though hearing the boys crudely jest about blow jobs and bras tickled something inside of me, I also held them in them contempt. So limited, so puerile. They were the majority, the sort who had no motivation to ever leave Cross Point Village. They would marry a local girl and pop out a bunch of brats in their own likeness and rarely think about anything more rousing than where their next beer was hiding.
As I stared at the ceiling and listened to the ribald talk of Tony and his half drunk pals I grew restless, finally hopping off the bed and padding down the hall to the kitchen. My mother and I had baked chocolate chip cookies earlier in the evening and I figured a nice sugar rush might settle me down.
Running into him was like colliding with a rock wall.
“Whoa,” he breathed, exhaling a cloud of alcohol and steadying himself on my shoulders.
I backed away. “What the hell are you
doing in here?”
Marco Bendetti peered down at me in the darkness of my parents’ living room. He’d grown at least four inches the past year and I felt more than a bit unnerved being so close to him.
“Got to take a piss,” he explained, motioning down the hall.
“Don’t you have a bathroom in that house across the street?”
Marco was not shy about staring at my chest with a nasty grin. I blushed and pushed my plastic frame eyeglasses up my nose, then crossed my arms. “Well?”
“So I can’t use your bathroom, Angela?”
I tossed my head, wishing I wasn’t wearing an old 4-H t-shirt with my hair in a childish ponytail. “Go ahead then. But be quiet. My dad won’t like it.”
After grabbing a handful of cookies I ran back to my room before Marco finished in the bathroom. I sat cross-legged on the edge of my bed, chewing on great mouthfuls of chocolate chips as the curtains rustled in the warm air. I didn’t even hear the gentle whine of the screen door closing, yet Marco had found his way silently out of the house and rejoined his friends.
“Man,” he whistled. “The tits on that girl almost made me cream my pants.”
“What girl?” piped up an interested voice.
“Angie.”
My jaw dropped, spilling wet cookie crumbs into my lap.
Another of the boys snorted. “Shit, don’t let Tony hear you say that if you want to live.”
“Where the hell is he anyway?”
“Off getting a blow from Cortez.”
“Jeez, he’ll settle for anything.”
Another snort. “You’re one to talk.”
“Not at all. I have the option of selectivity.”
“Well you better not select Tony’s sister unless you want to end up eating your own balls.”
And then suddenly there was Tony’s low, slurred voice. “What are you shitheads talking about?”
“Tits,” said Marco in a mild voice.
“Hey Tony, she spit or swallow?”
“Whose tits?” asked Tony, belching.
“Marco has a hard on for your sister.”
“Hey thanks, asshole.”
Tony seemed to sober up in a heartbeat, his voice murderous. “Bendetti, you touch my fucking sister and I’ll fucking kill you.”
“Piss up a flagpole, Durant. I just said she had nice tits.”
A string of swearing and the sound of a scuffle ensued.
“Fuck is your problem, Tony? You don’t so much as blink when that cousin of yours gets fingered in plain sight on the cannon.”
Tony laughed meanly. “Krista? Do whatever you like with that little skank but I’m warning you, Angie is off limits. That goes for all you lousy little pricks and you know damn well I don’t like to say the same thing twice.”
The other boys murmured some form of agreement and the subject seemed to die in favor of other talk, like which CPV High teacher had the best ass. Once a consensus was reached that the prize belonged to Mrs. Carrington, the art teacher, someone reached the grand conclusion that beer was running low.
As the boys wandered away from the side yard in a haze of cussing and obscene jokes, I had forgotten the chocolate chip cookies in my lap.
I had, it seemed, forgotten how to breathe.
Marco’s comments, coarse though they were, left me feeling strange and excited. Timidly I pulled back the collar of my shirt and stared into the fleshy twin masses which seemed to grow daily. I tried to imagine Marco’s large hands on them. It wasn’t hard.
But then I remembered Tony’s dire words and I exhaled with irritation. I was pretty sure my brother didn’t give a damn about me. In school I was a nonentity to him and the only time he acknowledged me at home was to bellow something along the lines of, “Get your fat ass out of the bathroom!” or “Did you eat the rest of my fucking cereal?”
But everyone was scared shitless of Tony so as my peers groped each other on Saturday night in the school yard or Cannon Banged in the moonlight, no one dared come near me.
Tony wasn’t the overprotective type. I knew such brothers existed but I also knew mine didn’t have a tender spot in his entire soul. So I cursed my brother for being a mean, joyless prick and flopped on top of the covers, letting Marco’s words run through my mind again and again.
I did not fall asleep for a long long time.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
My father was always unintentionally loud throughout his morning routine. It used to drive me bananas as a kid. I would be trying vainly to sleep in on a Saturday morning as he banged the kitchen cabinets open and closed as if on some sort of passive aggressive mission until my mother’s soft voice would scold him.
“Alan, let the kids sleep.”
And my father would mutter something about how he was never allowed to nap idly until midmorning. No, he had to work in the store every summer since the age of ten.
I glanced at the clock and noticed it was after seven. He would be leaving for the store soon to sweep the building front, carefully wash the windows, and open the doors by nine. I made a mental note to try and stop by sometime during the day, though it saddened me to observe the shabby slowness of the family business. It had been different when I was very young, before the fortunes of Cross Point Village began to crumble and chip away at the lives within.
As my parents murmured their goodbyes as they had uncounted times before, I closed my eyes. I wasn’t tired. I was thinking of Marco.
A delicious chill ran through me. It was something Brian had never been capable of producing. Honestly, it was a feeling that no one had touched in me, a thrilling anticipation that was as heady as the first spring day warm enough to run barefoot in the backyard.
“I’m no good at this shit, Angela.”
I opened my eyes, the thrill disappearing. I’d dismissed those words the night before but they began to sink in. In two days I would be returning to Boston and Marco would be…doing whatever Marco does. Was he trying to fend off any expectations? Did I have any expectations?
Then I remembered the way he held me and touched me, the way his brow had creased with worry at the dinner table as he feared making a wrong move.
Yes, I realized, considering my own internal question. I did.
And that was dangerous.
I listened to the rustling noises of my mother going about her morning tasks. After cleaning the kitchen and starting a load of laundry I heard her enter Tony’s bedroom down the hall and go through a ritual of straightening and dusting for a son who may not have any intention of ever seeing the room again. I imagined Grace Durant entering my bedroom in my absence and felt sad. I’d always given little consideration for the fact that I could return any day of any year and find my surroundings exactly as they always had been. I loved my apartment, my free and proudly independent life in the city. But this was home.
After a lone tear coursed down my cheek, I laughed at my own maudlin mind and threw off the covers.
The day was as brilliant as any fresh summer morning and I paused by the window for a long time, pushing my hair behind my ears as I opened the screen, inhaling the clean scent of grass and the vague tinge of lilac blossoms from the overgrown bush in the front yard.
After breakfast and a pleasant, lighthearted chat with my mother, I excused myself.
Grace looked at me curiously as I rinsed the breakfast dishes off.
“So, what are your plans today?”
I stared at the running water, trying to keep my voice airy. “Oh, I don’t know. I might go spend the afternoon with Marco.”
“I see.” I knew if I turned around she would be smiling into her tea mug.
I felt some guilt at getting her hopes up. I couldn’t even articulate my own intentions, let alone Marco’s. I could almost hear the story running through her mind as if she were already telling it to Mrs. Kilbourne or Mrs. Johnson or whoever the hell was willing to listen.
“Of course he was a difficult boy but he’s become a good man and isn’t it a
ll too perfect? The kids growing up nose to nose and never looking twice and then all these years later finding one another the way they did? It was meant to be.”
Only I didn’t believe that any love story of mine could possibly be so tidy. The problem with my mother is that everything had always been so neatly arranged in her life that she believed it should and would all be so orderly for everyone.
She was wrong.
By the time I indulged in a long, lazy shower and dressed in a pair of stonewash jeans with a rather risqué tank top, it was a quarter to eleven.
“What’s all this?” I asked, peering into a soft vinyl cooler on the kitchen table.
“Sandwiches,” said my mother.
I looked at her, a little nonplussed.
She shrugged. “I figured you kids might want to have a picnic.”
“Juice boxes, ma? We’re not eight.”
“No, but you’re never too old for juice boxes.”
I closed the bag, shouldered the strap and kissed my mother on her hollow cheek. “Thanks, Mom.”
“Angela,” she said, looking rather tired.
“Yeah?”
She smiled warmly. “Give Marco my regards.”
I’ll give him something.
As I left my house and walked across the street I felt jaunty, youthful. Marco’s house was completely silent. I climbed the pair of porch steps and knocked on the front door, listening to the unanswered echo. I checked my watch, frowning. He had said eleven. Then again, Marco nearly missed our high school graduation, famously arriving just as his name was about to be called. Almost as if he’d planned it that way.
I knocked more insistently but there was still no sign of life. In a flash of frustration, I reached for the doorknob, surprised to find it open. I entered the Bendetti home hesitantly.
“Marco?”
All I heard was the tick of the brass clock on top of the console television.
When the door slammed behind me I jumped three feet in the air and dropped the carefully packed cooler.
He grabbed me around the waist, pushing me against the wall. He smelled of Ivory soap and his hair was still wet from a shower.
